During my near decade in digital marketing, I’ve come to recognize a fundamental principle that cannot be ignored if one hopes to manage a successful campaign: If a business does not ensure that its brand looks good online, it will be wasting its money on internet marketing and other forms of advertising.

This point may seem obvious enough but the problem arises on a regular basis. It’s not enough to simply focus on attracting new customers without also investing in the branding infrastructure necessary to keep them once they have arrived.

I have encountered this type of situation many times since my first day in this industry. Imagine a company spends $10,000 per month on TV, radio and internet advertisements. Now also imagine this very same company has not updated its website in years. What do you suspect the average consumer will think when they land on a webpage that looks like it was made in the last century? Even worse, what do you suppose will happen when motivated buyers can’t easily access the site from their smartphones because it was never made to be mobile-friendly? Can you picture what this would do to the credibility of this company?